Plastic containers such as bottles of water are manufactured and filled according to different methods including blow moulding or stretch-blow moulding.
According to one of these known methods a plastic preform is first as, manufactured through a melding process and then heated before being positioned inside a blowing mould.
The preform usually takes the form of a cylindrical tube closed at its bottom end and open at its opposite end.
Once the preform has been positioned within the mould only the open end of the preform is visible from above the mould.
This method makes use of a stretch rod which is downwardly engaged into the open end of the preform so as to abut against the closed bottom end thereof. The stretch rod is further actuated to be urged against the closed end, thereby resulting in stretching the preform.
After the stretching phase has been initiated a liquid is also injected into the preform through its open end as disclosed for instance in Applicant's patent EP 1 529 620 B1. This liquid injection causes expansion of the preform until coming into contact with the inner walls of the mould, thereby achieving the final shape of the bottle.
Up to now a known machine or system for simultaneously blowing and filling plastic containers is vertically oriented and manufactures one container at a time.
Each machine or system comprises a mould enclosing a preform, stretching means for stretching the preform within the mould and injection means for injecting a liquid under pressure into the preform so as to cause expansion of said preform within the mould.
However, the throughput of such a machine operating according to the above manufacturing process is limited.
There is therefore a need to have a system for manufacturing and filling containers with a high throughput.